>Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon.
This scares the hell out of me that one mega conglomerate with it's algorithms has control over your procreation and deep knowledge of your sex life, all linked to your real identity.
Personally, I have no dog in this fight since I gave up on online dating and got good at IRL dating(pre-COVID) but I am aware of plenty of men willing to throw their cash and intimate data at these corporations for the hope of meeting someone.
Am I alone here to worry about this or am I just too paranoid?
If it were up to me, I would regulate the information dating apps collect to the same standards as patients' national healthcare information is handled(in the EU; I don't know about the US/UK but I heard it's not all rozy there).
Yeah, everybody thinks it's evil except for the people who use Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. It's bizarre to me how many upvotes pretending society isn't still embracing FaceBook gets. And when you say this people parrot tired points about how most people "use it because they have to" as if people who thought it was evil, in the the real way, wouldn't be willing to resist the compulsion. I don't think most HN posters are from tough enough places to know what it looks like when people actually think something is evil.
Amazon is not predatory to me. It has greatly improved my life from a convenience and cost perspective. They also recently raised their wages for all warehouse employees such that it's one of the best places to work for unskilled labor in many locations. Amazon has made many small time merchants rich through their platform, and it's software engineers are among the highest paid in the industry, so I have to strongly disagree about the zon, but the rest of it agree wholeheartedly.
Personally, I think we should rephrase this. Facebook is not evil in and of itself. Facebook's management is evil. Amazon's management is predatory. Microsoft is good (at the moment), because they have leaders at the helm that are taking notice of how to do things in a more ethical manner. We need to start assigning blame to people to start correcting the problem.
It's too easy to just pass of blame and say "Well, the machine is evil, no fixing that." Management should not get to hide behind the organization. We need to start sending a message that it's easy to fix what they are doing. Change out the people in charge, and change out the members of the board.
Exactly. It isn't just Facebook. The SEC and FTC have completely failed us in the last 20 years. Everything is about shareholder return, who cares about how many monopolies it creates.
Also, you forgot Disney, Comcast, Apple, AT&T, and many more.
> Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon.
Who'd that be? Not familiar with dating apps' company histories. I tried them but I'm experiencing much more success with old-fashioned dating. Tech hasn't disrupted dating for the majority of people, I think. [1]
[1] Because I know quite a few people that don't get any success out of it either, while they do get some success with old-fashioned dating.
Facebook is not evil at all. Their mission to connect the world. Sometimes it means making unpopular decisions but they're doing what's right for the long term.
I've been through Google's process 2.5 times. I made it to the on-site twice, hiring committee once but ultimately was rejected; one time I was setting up for a phone screen when the whole COVID thing thinged and I think I got dropped when they froze hiring.
My current job was acquired by essentially my current employer buying me out of a contract with my former employer. I was doing contract work and they wanted me full-time. My former employer, the consultancy my current employer contracted with, acquired me when they knew I was unhappy with the place I was at, another place they contracted with, prior to them. The place I was with prior, I was hired via a standard "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" type of interview. No assessment of my skills was made. I made claims, they took them at face value.
So I've been through several processes for getting jobs.
> Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes.
And this one is eh. Yes, their process is certainly rigorous and probably overkill. But the old style interview wasn't much better. The place where I work has gone through a couple of developers. Both were hired through more conventional means as we're not a software shop, we're a company that happens to need bespoke software.
Both were able to produce something in terms of software. None of it was excellent and the internals were just bad. I don't know another way to cut it. Neither were fired. Both quit for other jobs. We obviously need some sort of standard here.
We do need to assess whether or not someone can solve problems. We do need to assess whether or not someone can code sufficiently. Variable naming, indentation proclivities, clarity, etc. However, we cannot get caught up in testing whether they know the OTBS or the difference between systems and apps Hungarian or if they can solve trick questions.
I'm going to be responsible for essentially building a team for my department of the building. And I'll tell you now, I'm going to be making a process closer to Google's rather than the one I went through to get where I am. Not to lock the door behind me, but to make sure we don't repeat the same mistakes. It's essentially 1 for 3 (maybe, I could be garbage as well to be honest).
What's wrong with a skills assessment with regards to hiring? Or what's wrong with the way Google performs skills assessment with regards to hiring?
Microsoft only appears to play the nice guy if you assume large swaths of the computing market are a natural monopoly. Enterprise level desktop software and the Office suite are still locked into a single vendor.
OK, now judge governments by those same standards. I don't see Facebook invading Iraq on false pretenses, or imprisoning people for the crime of smoking marijuana, or shooting an unarmed guy for failing to follow conflicting commands.[1]
Hopefully now you understand where the libertarians and ancaps are coming from. It's not that corporations are good. It's that governments are so much worse.
Facebook has been unable to stop new entrants: Pinterest,
Snap, Tiktok, Twitter - All global and multi billion dollar companies, and still growing.
More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse
Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line
Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.
> Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.
I honestly laugh whenever I hear people still bring up those early social media companies as evidence that social media heavyweights somehow come and go. None of those companies ever came near the global reach of FB. A quick Google search gives a peak user count of MySpace of between 75 and 100 million, for FB it's 2.7 billion.
Those companies basically all existed before the vast majority of people were even on any social network, and importantly none of them had real-name policies initially. And the modern challengers you give all have some specific, much smaller niche, e.g. image galleries for Pinterest. There is simply no other social network that has ever challenged Facebook in the "connect all my friends and let me give and see life's updates" space.
Facebook stole pretty much wholesale, Stories from Snap, The timeline from Twitter, and now reels is its Tiktok clone. They've recently introduced "rooms" which is its theft of Houseparty not Zoom which everyone thought.
Facebook is a horrible company which hasn't come up with and original idea in years. It now uses its "sign in with facebook" button to see which apps people are using before copying them completely and leveraging its social graph.
At this point its a parasite on the web that stalls innovation.
Snap, Tiktok, Pinterest, and even twitter were never competing for the space that Facebook has. The main space Facebook has is social advertising and there is no competitors and anyone tries to enter that market gets attacked by Facebook since Facebook runs it. Try starting a company that will allow you to buy influencer ads on Instagram and uses the API the influencer can grant to you to correctly identify how much money to pay the influencer. Facebook will remove your API access the minute it realises you're trying to do advertising and they're not getting a cut. Facebook are very open that their problem is they're not making any money on it. We understand their reasoning but it's againist the law to then sue companies for trying to get public data and the other attacks. If Google can't rank it's own products higher in google search Facebook shouldn't be allowed to remove API access solely because you're providing a service they don't even provide and don't even want to provide.
What facebook has that none of the others do not is a value almost like infrastructure. They ARE your online identity in a way that pinterest/snap/twitter are not. Wechat is comparable (probably even more than FB) but only in China.
What FB has been able to do is smooth out those up and down waves by acquiring challengers (Insta/Whatsapp). They tried to buy snap too but when that didn't work they just copied features and now also copying TikTok.
So I don't think they're subject to those equalising forces as has been the case previously (and which do still affect everyone else - RIP Vine).
Unable, maybe. But not from lack of trying. You say social networks come and go but Facebook is still very much the largest network as it was ten years ago. Now is it because of cool innovations and better products or because of copying and stifling competitors, it's debatable.
But what makes this worse is the fact that Facebook hasn't been very vigilant about their privacy practises or political influencing on their platforms. And they haven't really suffered any repercussions from that. Which might embolden them and others to continue to do so unless something is done.
A new entrants champions a new feature or approach. That is then adopted into an existing product which can grow due to network effects. This can then expose the feature to a massive audience in a more culturally neutral form. So YouTube adds short video, Microsoft add Slack style chat to Office, and everyone adds Zoom style video calls. The original product slowly try's to build a wider platform, but is unable to compete on the same level.
All of those so-called challengers who died were ones that basically were killed by Facebook in its rise to power. None of the 'global competition' is really competitive outside of China, and the new entrants are copied as soon as they come out with something interesting. New challengers may emerge rapidly, but unless something is done from a regulatory side those same challengers will flame-out into either death or mediocrity within a few years of appearing.
As a simple example, those 'new entrants' (can we really call any of those four new other than TikTok?) are all multi-billion dollar companies, but by quickly cloning the interesting features of those entrants Facebook probably siphoned off as much value from those entrants as they are now worth. In a world without Facebook copying them all four of those companies would have market caps that were at least 2x their current levels.
ok...so the government approves acquisitions, and then later regrets those decisions.
Great way to send shockwaves through the M&A space with governing incompetence: rather than pass reasonable legislation and/or empower an existing department, just have a political theater of a committee process which selectively picks those who haven't lobbied enough _not_ to get in front of that committee.
Contrary to popular belief, the government is not a group of ten old men sitting in a conference room in DC. Different departments have different priorities.
It's funny because it's true. I mean the only substantial competitors to facebook are VK, telegram and a bunch of chinese companies, all of which would be considered "security threats"
That's a strawman , having wannabe competitors does not absolve them from their anticompetitive practices. "Facebook" is a web-based social network. They weren't competitors to snap-tiktok-telegram-discord . But then they bought instagram, they bought whatsapp, they built a copycat messenger and used facebook+ig to push it to everyone, they copied snap and pushed it to everyone, they copy slack and push it to everyone, they copy tiktok to push it to everyone ... you see the pattern here, using their earlier dominant position to destroy any chance of competition.
Amazon has competition from online stores like ebay, AliExpress, Wayfair, and Overstock. Traditional retailers like Walmart, Target, and Best buy also have online presence challenging Amazon. It's pretty trivial to cut them out of your life. They don't have much that you can't get elsewhere
> "Your only job is to get an extra minute,” the former employee told the subcommittee. “It’s immoral. They don’t ask where it’s coming from. They can monetize a minute of activity at a certain rate. So the only metric is getting another minute.”
Not surprising, but a very interesting quote nonetheless.
Eventually companies become so large they can't innovate - doing something new is too big a risk (it will eat into existing revenue and may fail anyway) and too expensive (its hard to change the structure and direction of a 10's and 100's of thousands of employees).
The only way they continue operating is to outsource R&D - buy companies that have proven a new business model or product, or replicate what they've done.
This has been the case since VisiCalc, Wordperfect, Netscape, IBM etc. - is there an alternative for large companies?
Even if it s true, who here thinks that antimonopoly action is going to work?
Instead i think they should strike their crucial market advantage: the assumption that user-generated content is free. It should not be, in fact users should be getting paid to have their content featured. A law that would prevent the use of user-generated content for ad purposes without compensating the user would help share the wealth.
Facebook has been trying to create a monopoly since years. Whatsapp was a messenger app but now it is a part of social media. Instagram was an image sharing app, now it is a part of social media.
Interoperability may be hard to archive knowing that Facebook lowered drastically reach for posts may by official API versus UI. It was a "bug"... known and lasting for several years. ..
> "The report also recommends that Congress consider any acquisition by the big tech companies to be anticompetitive unless the companies can prove that the merger would be in the public’s benefit and could not be otherwise achieved."
I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly?
What if the influence on public welfare is non existent or minimal, but both companies would benefit from the merger?
[+] [-] durnygbur|5 years ago|reply
Amazon is predatory for everyone - merchants, warehouse employees, IT employees, job candidates.
Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes.
Microsoft temporarily plays the nice guy.
Then we have this whole dating thing entirely owned by one media hegemon.
All together pay minuscle taxes.
...and here we are.
[+] [-] ChuckNorris89|5 years ago|reply
This scares the hell out of me that one mega conglomerate with it's algorithms has control over your procreation and deep knowledge of your sex life, all linked to your real identity.
Personally, I have no dog in this fight since I gave up on online dating and got good at IRL dating(pre-COVID) but I am aware of plenty of men willing to throw their cash and intimate data at these corporations for the hope of meeting someone.
Am I alone here to worry about this or am I just too paranoid?
If it were up to me, I would regulate the information dating apps collect to the same standards as patients' national healthcare information is handled(in the EU; I don't know about the US/UK but I heard it's not all rozy there).
[+] [-] dhyreueu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyrrhotech|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kemiller2002|5 years ago|reply
It's too easy to just pass of blame and say "Well, the machine is evil, no fixing that." Management should not get to hide behind the organization. We need to start sending a message that it's easy to fix what they are doing. Change out the people in charge, and change out the members of the board.
[+] [-] x87678r|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snarf21|5 years ago|reply
Also, you forgot Disney, Comcast, Apple, AT&T, and many more.
[+] [-] mettamage|5 years ago|reply
Who'd that be? Not familiar with dating apps' company histories. I tried them but I'm experiencing much more success with old-fashioned dating. Tech hasn't disrupted dating for the majority of people, I think. [1]
[1] Because I know quite a few people that don't get any success out of it either, while they do get some success with old-fashioned dating.
[+] [-] cryptica|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeyes|5 years ago|reply
Actually, Facebook Dating is a breath of fresh air which doesn't implement features designed to get to your wallet.
[+] [-] bena|5 years ago|reply
My current job was acquired by essentially my current employer buying me out of a contract with my former employer. I was doing contract work and they wanted me full-time. My former employer, the consultancy my current employer contracted with, acquired me when they knew I was unhappy with the place I was at, another place they contracted with, prior to them. The place I was with prior, I was hired via a standard "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" type of interview. No assessment of my skills was made. I made claims, they took them at face value.
So I've been through several processes for getting jobs.
> Google screwed the recruitment irrevocably and what's worse every minor shop attempts to copy their processes.
And this one is eh. Yes, their process is certainly rigorous and probably overkill. But the old style interview wasn't much better. The place where I work has gone through a couple of developers. Both were hired through more conventional means as we're not a software shop, we're a company that happens to need bespoke software.
Both were able to produce something in terms of software. None of it was excellent and the internals were just bad. I don't know another way to cut it. Neither were fired. Both quit for other jobs. We obviously need some sort of standard here.
We do need to assess whether or not someone can solve problems. We do need to assess whether or not someone can code sufficiently. Variable naming, indentation proclivities, clarity, etc. However, we cannot get caught up in testing whether they know the OTBS or the difference between systems and apps Hungarian or if they can solve trick questions.
I'm going to be responsible for essentially building a team for my department of the building. And I'll tell you now, I'm going to be making a process closer to Google's rather than the one I went through to get where I am. Not to lock the door behind me, but to make sure we don't repeat the same mistakes. It's essentially 1 for 3 (maybe, I could be garbage as well to be honest).
What's wrong with a skills assessment with regards to hiring? Or what's wrong with the way Google performs skills assessment with regards to hiring?
[+] [-] loudmax|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mc_Big_G|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zkid18|5 years ago|reply
Can you elaborate on that?
[+] [-] chroma|5 years ago|reply
Hopefully now you understand where the libertarians and ancaps are coming from. It's not that corporations are good. It's that governments are so much worse.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver
[+] [-] jkw|5 years ago|reply
More to come are: Telegram, Discord, Houseparty, Clubhouse
Plus global competition from: Wechat, Weibo, Line
Social networks come and go. The space is a lot more whimsical than people think. Remember Friendster, MySpace, AIM. A new challenger will emerge every 3-5 years.
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|5 years ago|reply
I honestly laugh whenever I hear people still bring up those early social media companies as evidence that social media heavyweights somehow come and go. None of those companies ever came near the global reach of FB. A quick Google search gives a peak user count of MySpace of between 75 and 100 million, for FB it's 2.7 billion.
Those companies basically all existed before the vast majority of people were even on any social network, and importantly none of them had real-name policies initially. And the modern challengers you give all have some specific, much smaller niche, e.g. image galleries for Pinterest. There is simply no other social network that has ever challenged Facebook in the "connect all my friends and let me give and see life's updates" space.
[+] [-] Cymruboogaloo|5 years ago|reply
Facebook is a horrible company which hasn't come up with and original idea in years. It now uses its "sign in with facebook" button to see which apps people are using before copying them completely and leveraging its social graph. At this point its a parasite on the web that stalls innovation.
[+] [-] johnnyfaehell|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonplackett|5 years ago|reply
What FB has been able to do is smooth out those up and down waves by acquiring challengers (Insta/Whatsapp). They tried to buy snap too but when that didn't work they just copied features and now also copying TikTok.
So I don't think they're subject to those equalising forces as has been the case previously (and which do still affect everyone else - RIP Vine).
[+] [-] tekkk|5 years ago|reply
But what makes this worse is the fact that Facebook hasn't been very vigilant about their privacy practises or political influencing on their platforms. And they haven't really suffered any repercussions from that. Which might embolden them and others to continue to do so unless something is done.
[+] [-] 7952|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] evgen|5 years ago|reply
As a simple example, those 'new entrants' (can we really call any of those four new other than TikTok?) are all multi-billion dollar companies, but by quickly cloning the interesting features of those entrants Facebook probably siphoned off as much value from those entrants as they are now worth. In a world without Facebook copying them all four of those companies would have market caps that were at least 2x their current levels.
[+] [-] xbmcuser|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s3r3nity|5 years ago|reply
Great way to send shockwaves through the M&A space with governing incompetence: rather than pass reasonable legislation and/or empower an existing department, just have a political theater of a committee process which selectively picks those who haven't lobbied enough _not_ to get in front of that committee.
[+] [-] ceilingcorner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dastx|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qahlel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koonsolo|5 years ago|reply
And on the other hand, the only real competitor is Chinese so it needs to be banned.
I know my reasoning is not well thought out, but I just find it funny.
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffreyrogers|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zpeti|5 years ago|reply
Facebook - Snap, Tiktok, Telegram, Discord, Houseparty (and we still have Twitter, Pinterest, Wechat)
Google - Duckduckgo (really?)
Amazon - Shopify (really?)
Apple - Android (really?)
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] treis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mavsman|5 years ago|reply
Not surprising, but a very interesting quote nonetheless.
[+] [-] helsinkiandrew|5 years ago|reply
The only way they continue operating is to outsource R&D - buy companies that have proven a new business model or product, or replicate what they've done.
This has been the case since VisiCalc, Wordperfect, Netscape, IBM etc. - is there an alternative for large companies?
[+] [-] cblconfederate|5 years ago|reply
Instead i think they should strike their crucial market advantage: the assumption that user-generated content is free. It should not be, in fact users should be getting paid to have their content featured. A law that would prevent the use of user-generated content for ad purposes without compensating the user would help share the wealth.
[+] [-] known|5 years ago|reply
Just saying FB...
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanislavb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ratherbeelse|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beyondcompute|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] humanrebar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakuboboza|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beagle3|5 years ago|reply
And that's why nothing will happen to Facebook.
[+] [-] tomaszs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott800|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] scott800|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kyrers|5 years ago|reply
I'm sorry, what? Two private tech companies cannot merge if they can't prove it is in the public's best interest? Am I understanding this correctly?
What if the influence on public welfare is non existent or minimal, but both companies would benefit from the merger?